Celandine Read online

  Freddie, having reached the end of his travels, was dizzily aware of his sister landing with a sudden thump close by, and of the dull sickening smack of bone upon rock. A tiny whimper was all that followed, then silence.

  ‘Dinah? Dinah!’ Freddie scrabbled over to where Celandine lay – saw the loose slab of grey stone half-buried in the grass beside her motionless head. He shook her shoulder, but there was no reaction, no sound. Her eyes were closed and she was very white.

  Still dazed from his own descent, Freddie scrambled back up Howard’s Hill, gasping and shouting for help. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice. Even when the party came back into view, nobody took any notice. They just kept talking, right up until the moment where he grabbed his mother’s arm.

  ‘Mama! I kept shouting for you! It’s Dinah! I think she’s dead!’

  *

  ‘No, do not move her. This is not a good idea. Lizzie please … let me see.’ Josef Wesser knelt by Lizzie Howard, his sister, and tried to prevent her from lifting the child. Poor Mrs Howard was frantic, and Josef glanced up at Erstcourt in appeal. Erstcourt said, ‘Come, Lizzie, let Josef do his work,’ and at the same time placed his hands about his wife’s shoulders and drew her towards him.

  Josef held the child’s wrist and felt for her pulse, leaning forward so that his ear was next to Celandine’s mouth. He listened closely. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, almost instantly. ‘She is breathing.’

  As if to confirm this, Celandine began to move, rolling her head from side to side and setting up a continuous high-pitched moan. Her eyes were still closed and Josef said, ‘She remains unconscious. But I think there are no bones broken.’

  Mrs Howard knelt once more beside her daughter, still distraught. ‘Oh, Josef – what can we do? What can we do?’

  ‘Should we take her down to the house?’ said Erstcourt.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Josef looked doubtful. It was quite a long way, and he was worried that the child might suffer more from being carried than from staying where she was. It would be good to get her out of the sun though. He glanced up at the crowd of people who were now standing on the slope above them, looking down upon the scene, and then spoke to Lizzie.

  ‘There was a baby in a carriage. Somebody had a … a bassinet. Might we borrow it, do you think?’

  ‘Oh yes – I’m sure we could. Mrs Svann would never mind, I am sure. Mrs Svann!’ Lizzie called up to Mrs Swann, who was among the crowd up on the hillside. ‘Could we borrow the baby’s carriage? The bassinet!’

  Mrs Swann turned and spoke to somebody behind her, and in a few moments Mr Swann and Thos were bringing the big wicker carriage rather clumsily down the side of the hill.

  By the time they had gently lifted Celandine into the baby carriage and made her as comfortable as they could, she had begun to regain consciousness. She had not yet spoken, but her eyes were open and she seemed aware of what was happening.

  ‘I think perhaps we could take her back up to the platform,’ said Josef. ‘You would want to be with her, Lizzie, and it would be a pity to spoil the party if it is not necessary. I also shall be there. We will watch her for a while and see how she is.’

  And so Josef, Thos, Erstcourt and Mr Swann carried the baby carriage back up to the platform and let it stand by the top table. Josef mixed a headache powder with a little lemonade – and the fact that Celandine was able to sit up and drink this encouraged her family to believe that she had probably not taken too much harm from her fall. Freddie in particular was hugely relieved, although worried at the same time. Now that the crisis appeared to be over, he feared that there would be trouble – and that the blame for the whole thing was likely to fall upon him. When nobody was looking, he put a piece of cake in the bassinet as a peace offering.

  It soon became clear that Celandine could not remain where she was for long. Though small, she was certainly too big to fit comfortably into a baby carriage, and Josef had propped her up with her head resting on a pillow placed over the folded-down hood. She was unprotected from the sun, and exposed also to the surrounding hubbub of the party.

  ‘We could carry her a little further up the hill and place her under the shade of the trees,’ said Josef. ‘Then she would be able to rest properly. And of course we should be able to see her from here. Celandine – how are you feeling? Shall we put you under the trees? Would you like that?’

  Celandine was feeling too hot and headachy and sick to answer.

  She floated into consciousness once more, from a dream where a thousand Union Jacks were flying and she was heading a great procession of noisy people. They were carrying her in a litter toward a distant abbey, and her Coronation.

  Her head hurt and she did not want to open her eyes. She could still hear the sound of many cheerful voices, but knew that she was not in a procession. She was lying, not very comfortably, in a baby carriage and the voices she heard were the voices drifting up from the party below. Birds she could also hear, high above her – wood pigeons – calling to each other softly.

  Beneath the trees on Howard’s Hill, that was where she was. She opened her eyes just a little, and allowed blotchy shades of green to filter through her lashes. Overhanging foliage dipped down towards her, quite close, sheltering her in a leafy world, cool and comforting, despite the pain in her head. So peaceful it was, to stare up through the patterns of graceful boughs, to watch the gentle shifting colours, to breathe in the woodland scents of leaf and bark and briar rose.

  But how fierce and wild those briars looked. A great bank of them climbed to her left, enveloping the trunks of the trees in thorny tangles. How terrible it would be to fall amongst them. Better to look up instead, through the friendly branches of the spreading oak, to let the shapes mingle and blur, shiny as sequins … coloured sequins that pulsated slightly, in time with the dull throbbing in her temples.

  And now she was dreaming once again, for here were eyes that gazed down towards her – big brown eyes, set wide apart, beautiful eyes that were fixed, not upon her own, but upon something else close by.

  The eyes blinked, so huge in such a tiny face, and a small brown hand was nervously wiped over the half open mouth. Celandine squeezed her own eyes shut for a few moments, and then opened them again. Still there – well-hidden among the leaves, but still there.

  Calm and dreamy, she felt uncertain now as to whether she was asleep or awake.

  Marmoset – the word came into her head … marmoset. From a travelling zoo they had taken her to. Marmoset. Like Somerset, she had thought at the time, but a creature rather than a county. A creature with big brown eyes, a pretty thing … but not clothed. No, not clothed.

  So it was not a marmoset. What, then? And what was it looking at? Celandine raised her head very slightly and glanced down at the baby’s coverlet that they had lightly draped over her. A piece of cake lay on a roughly folded napkin, tucked between herself and the inner side of the wicker carriage. Cherry cake. She painfully lowered her head once more, and now the eyes were looking directly at her, peeping from behind the leaves, retreating, then peeping again. Full of curiosity they were, of innocence, and of longing. The eyes moved from her to the piece of cake and back to her again. She might have laughed if it wasn’t for the pain. The wanting was so undisguised, so obvious.

  And there was something else in the look of those eyes that she had seen before. Something extra – or something missing. Like Charity Hobbs. Yes, that was it. Poor Charity had just such a look about her. Imbecile, they called her, the carter’s youngest child. Imbecile – though it was said in pity rather than contempt. But Charity did not hang from the branches of trees, brown and skinny, like a marmoset, and dress in bits of feathers and rags and … what? Rabbit skins? She couldn’t see properly.

  So it was not a marmoset and it was certainly not Charity Hobbs. Celandine did not want to lift her head again – it hurt too much – but she allowed her fingers to search for the cherry cake, breaking a piece off, feeling the soft crumbly texture, sticky from the hea
t.

  ‘Cake,’ she whispered, and raised her arm, holding the morsel aloft, reaching up towards the dipping branches. Her tongue was dry and her throat hurt, but she said it once more. ‘Cake.’

  Again the flash of a tiny brown hand, the hurried wiping of the mouth, and the deep longing in the wide-set eyes that darted back and forth from her to the cherry cake. After a while it became an effort for Celandine to keep her arm upright and she began to lower it once more. The creature seemed to panic at the sight of the cake apparently being withdrawn, and it moved forward slightly, parting the foliage, revealing more of itself. Feathers, and raggedy bits of cloth … fur. A tiny thing – a manikin. A boy.

  It crawled towards her, upside down like a squirrel on the hanging branch, the big eyes fearful but eager, a hand outstretched, brown and grubby and as small as a doll’s, yet so near. So near, the trembling skinny fingers. Marching drums beat at her temples and the foliage waved to and fro, bringing the sound of distant laughing voices in and out of focus. There, and not there. And then another voice, closer – hissing – an urgent whisper. ‘Fin! Fin! Drat the young fool – what bist doing now? Fin!’

  Celandine raised her arm again, automatically, and felt the piece of cake being snatched away from her, heard the quick rustle of leaves, a scrabble of movement. Her vision was all wavy, but she briefly caught sight of another face – older, bearded – and a flash of panic in deep-set eyes. A glance in her direction, angry and troubled, as though gauging the damage done. Then the leaves were still, and there was nothing more to be seen. But she heard the voice again, just one word, fading into the greenery as the light began to slip away. ‘Fin!’

  The sound of it bounced around her head, a retreating echo in the closing darkness.

  ‘Who are those little people that live in the woods?’ she said.

  Three figures stood at her bedside: her mother, her Uncle Josef and – most surprisingly – her father. She couldn’t remember that her father had ever visited her room before, not even when she had had the mumps. They had all changed their clothes since she had fallen asleep. The party was obviously over.

  Now they stared down at her and her father, his mouth unsmiling beneath his greying moustache, said, ‘She’s awake, at last. Well, I’d better be off. Need a word with Hughes about the grain hoist. I’ll leave her to you then, Lizzie – the child has taken no great harm, it would seem. Josef, shall you stay to supper? No? I’ll say good day then.’

  Her mother sat down on the edge of the bed, her skirts rustling, and leaned forward, reaching a hand out towards her. Celandine felt the cool fingers resting on her forehead and she closed her eyes again for a few moments. She heard her mother whisper something to Uncle Josef, but the words were in German and difficult to make out.

  Uncle Josef’s reply was clearer, easier to understand. ‘Keine sorge, Lizzie. Sie ist stark.’

  Don’t worry, Lizzie. She is strong.

  Strong. Was she strong? She didn’t feel it. She opened her eyes again.

  ‘Who are those little people living in our woods?’

  She saw her mother look sideways at Josef – a worried glance – and noticed that Josef shook his head slightly. What was the matter? It was a simple enough question.

  Josef lifted up the wicker chair that stood in the corner and brought it over to the bedside. He sat on it the wrong way round, straddling it as though it were a horse, leaning his forearms across the hooped back. His bearded chin rested on his arms, so that when he spoke his head moved up and down slightly.

  ‘You saw some people?’ he said. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the wood. They were up in the trees. They were very small people.’

  ‘Ah.’ Josef thought about this for a while. ‘How small were they, these people?’

  ‘Ever so small. Tiny.’

  ‘So. Like … ah … die Fee? What is the English word … fairies? Like fairies?’

  ‘Oh no. Much bigger than fairies.’

  ‘I see.’ Josef leaned sideways slightly and lowered one of his hands, palm downwards, until it hovered about a foot above the bedside rug. ‘Then … like so, perhaps?’

  ‘A bit bigger, I think. I couldn’t see very well.’

  Josef raised the level of his hand slightly and his eyebrows lifted in comical query at the same time. Celandine laughed and Josef continued to raise his hand in jerky movements, higher and higher, until he was out of his chair, stretching as tall as he could, with his fingers almost touching the ceiling. ‘This small?’

  He sat down again and lowered his chin onto his hands once more. He was smiling. ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘They were just … little. Little people. There was a boy, and I gave him some cake. His father – well, I think it must have been his father – was angry with him. He said “drat”. He had a beard.’

  ‘Ah. Like my beard?’

  ‘Yes. Just like yours.’

  ‘And you were … where … in the cart? In the baby carriage?’

  ‘Yes. They were in the trees, looking down at me. The boy was. He didn’t have many clothes on – just some bits of rags and feathers. And some fur. The father was only there later on … he shouted something … Fin! …’

  Celandine stopped talking, realizing that there was going to be no answer to her question. On Josef’s face was an expression of concerned curiosity, and on her mother’s a look of open horror. They plainly didn’t know who the little people were.

  Josef put his hands together, almost as though he was praying, and touched his nose with his fingertips.

  ‘Celandine, you must not let this frighten you. And you also, Lizzie – do not be alarmed. This is not at all unusual.’

  ‘I wasn’t frightened,’ began Celandine, ‘only my head hurt, you see, and it was all a bit blurry …’

  ‘Of course. Your head hurt, and your vision was … ah … not perfect. You have taken a bad knock, and so it is expected that …’ Josef parted his hands and gave a slight shrug. Her mother took her cue from Uncle Josef and turned towards her with a nervous little shrug of her own. ‘Yes. Of course. Is expected. My poor liebling. But no more strange peoples, eh? All soon will be well.’

  ‘But I did see them. They were there.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Joseph. ‘Sometimes our eyes like to play funny games with us. You remember the little trick I showed you, Celandine, at Christmas, with the handkerchief and the playing cards? The Knave of Hearts, yes? First he was there, and then he was not there, and then he was there again. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Celandine. She remembered. But that was different.

  They didn’t believe her, and she wasn’t sure why. The appearance of the tree-people had been surprising, shocking even, but no more so than some of the things she had seen at the travelling zoo – where the sight of a kiwi had so impressed her that she had held on tight to her mother’s hand and said, ‘But there aren’t really such things, are there?’ And the baboons she had seen with their brightly painted faces, and the gorgeous macaw that had offered to take her coat – these creatures seemed no less unlikely than a very small person with a taste for cherry cake.

  But the more she insisted upon what she had seen, the more agitated her mother became, and the more grave the look in her Uncle Josef’s eyes. In the end she gave it up and tried another subject.

  ‘Have they all gone home now?’

  But this didn’t seem to have been quite the right thing to say either, for now their expressions changed from concern to puzzlement. Then Josef understood.

  ‘Oh, the party. Yes, they have all gone home, Celandine. You have been sleeping for some while. The picnic party was yesterday – we have been quite worried, you know.’

  Freddie, at least, believed her story.

  ‘Golly,’ he said, and jumped off the corner of her bed to go and peer out of the window. ‘How many, do you think? Just the two that you saw? Or are there lots of them? I wonder … I wonder what they eat.’

  Celandine laughed. ‘Cake,’ she said.
r />   ‘No, but seriously …’ Freddie turned his head to look at her, his blue eyes wide and questioning. ‘And what do they do when it rains? And what about in the winter? Come on, Dinah – we have to go and see. Are you well enough? I wonder if they’d like some eggs. Or carrots. We could get some from the garden.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  ‘Hop up, then. I’ll go and see if I can find a basket.’

  And that was the wonderful thing about Freddie – he had no patience. Everything had to happen now. He never said ‘We’ll have to wait and see’, or ‘Perhaps we’d better think about it’. He wasn’t sensible, like Thos.

  ‘What a mixture of children you have, Mrs Howard.’ People often said this – visitors who came to call. And Celandine could see that it was true, as she sat at her dressing table and tried to organize her ridiculous hair. Thos was dark, like their father – dark hair, and dark serious eyes. He also had Erstcourt’s dark and sudden temper. Freddie was fair and blue-eyed, like their mother, and his hair had to be kept very short because it was so curly. Freddie was impatient and it could be difficult to get his attention, but he was seldom grumpy. When Celandine looked into the mirror she could see Thos’s grave brown eyes staring back at her. And when she tried to get a brush through her frizzy blonde curls she could see how Freddie’s hair would be if it was allowed to grow. Yes, they were a mixture all right, and she was the strangest mixture of them all. No wonder people gave her odd looks.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Freddie was straight back, and he’d managed to get hold of an egg basket. ‘Let’s go and see if we can find them, then.’